


Carebears on Ice

by ghostyouknow



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animal Transformation, Bears, Crack, F/M, Romance, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 17:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1083570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostyouknow/pseuds/ghostyouknow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel's cursed to spend his days as a polar bear. Meg does not want bear hugs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carebears on Ice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snickfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/gifts).



Castiel's claws clicked on the ice, sure and steady.  
  
Meg couldn't call the movement graceful, with his heavy shoulders and lumbering roll. She couldn't say that Castiel had much grace about him at all, considering that someone had gone and plucked the angel right out of him, just in time for a warlock to stick him full of polar bear. He was assured, though, and tenacious, even when he wasn't cursed with great white paws and fangs only just south of sabertooth.  
  
Meg tugged on his tail.  
  
He craned his neck around and scowled at her as best he could with his smooth dome of a skull.  
  
“Hold up,” she said. “Not all of us trained for Carebears on Ice.”  
  
His squinted at her, like he couldn't decide whether or not to take offense, before shaking his head and loosing a low huff. His bear voice was only a little deeper than his human one. His bear breath smelled a whole lot more like seal fat.  
  
She slipped her way to his front, grabbing at guard hairs as needed. She stuck her gloved hands behind his ears and gave them a rub, if not the scratching he would've preferred. Leave it to Meg to learn a bear's buttons. “Last I checked, you can't leave me behind and still snare your warlock.”  
  
The brothers Winchester were too caught up in their own bullshit to traipse around the Beaufort sea looking for a would-be Snow King. Castiel couldn't do much for them, either, since he spent every daylight hour as a polar bear. You couldn't tie one of those to the top of your car and still pass for FBI agents.  
  
Castiel grumbled. Meg pressed her forehead against his. His fur felt nice. Toasty. “We're gonna get him, Clarence. Then you and me are gonna tuck ourselves somewhere nice and warm, and I'm going to see what I can do with twenty-four hours of you being human-shaped.”  
  
The days lasted twenty hours, here. They'd been twenty-four when he'd first been cursed. Meg was old—ancient, even—so she wasn't going to say she'd never forget that first moment of darkness. But she'd remember the smile in Castiel's eyes, the way his hands had gripped hers, for a hell of a long time.  
  
They hadn't known he could turn human, before then.  
  
Castiel growled, but when Meg pulled back, his eyes had gone soft and adoring. She'd never get used to anyone directing that look her way, human or bear.  
  
“Nightfall in two hours,” she said. “We should start looking for a campsite.”  
  
He nudged her torso— _I was speeding up for a reason, Meg_ —then stretched his lower body down, down, until Meg could pull her way up. Meg had a tent and supplies to reckon with, so it was a good minute before she straddled his spine and he could continue plodding toward the warlock: The one they hoped was dumb enough to broker an alliance with a demon like Meg. After that, it was a simple matter of gaining the upper hand, and Meg knew how to twist a power-hungry human around her finger right before she braided their entrails into jumprope.  
  
She kept herself flat against Castiel's back, as much out of the wind as she could get, and mumbled into his fur. “Not my favorite way of riding you.”  
  
He twitched like a fly had bitten him. She couldn't help but grin.  
  
#  
  
They didn't get to fuck much. When Castiel wasn't a bear, he was a human camping in the Arctic. Moisture meant frostbite, and Meg wanted at least a few of his body parts pink and healthy and attached to the rest of him.  
  
They'd stopped, once, in Churchill, Manitoba, when nights were long enough to get Castiel in and out of a room without anyone seeing a bear. They'd had their fun, enjoyed heat and hot water, then left before dawn. He'd used a pay phone before they went. It wasn't too hard to figure out who he'd called.  
  
So Meg was looking at a months-long dry spell. Instead of pretending Castiel could still toss her around, she got to hustle him into their lightweight arctic-proof sleeping tent as soon as he shrank enough to fit, then rub warmth into his limbs. He started freezing as soon as he shed his blubber, and his blubber was one of the first things to go. Four layers of wool and fleece. Polar boots. Thermal sleeping bags zipped together.  
  
She'd never spent so much time touching someone without flaying their skin. It pissed her off, sometimes, that Clarence had gone mortal. She used to like that he could torch her with a touch. Now she just liked him, sans bells and whistles, and that seemed bigger somehow. Worse.  
  
She kissed him after his dinner, when they'd bundled up like creatures used to bundling. He tasted like the two sticks of butter he'd melted into his oatmeal, since his human self needed calories by the shitload no matter how much he ate as a bear. She ran her tongue over his teeth. His canines felt sharp. Too sharp for human.  
  
Castiel pulled away, eyes dark.  
  
She brushed her thumb over his cheekbone. “What's it like? Being a bear?”  
  
Castiel raised an eyebrow. “Why? Do you want to possess one?”  
  
She smiled. “Now there's an idea. We could have a romantic stakeout over a seal's breathing hole. You could take me bear style.”  
  
“That would involve a week spent on a ice floe attempting to stimulate your ovulation …”  
  
“You sure know how to sweet talk a girl. We could skinny dip between glaciers. I could find out if your roar really is worse than your bite.”  
  
His mouth thinned. “You'd only be wearing a bear. A bear you'd ask me to have sex with, which would then birth cubs I fathered.”  
  
It wouldn't be _the_ kinkiest notch on Meg's bedpost. “What are you saying, Clarence? Bears don't do it for you?”  
  
He glared at her. She doubted he'd understood her double meaning. She knew he wouldn't tell her if polar bear ladies were giving him stiffies, but it wasn't impossible. If human flesh could influence an angel one way, Meg didn't see how a bearsuit couldn't push a human another.  
  
“Just so long as you like me best, Clarence.”  
  
He studied her face a long second, more serious and less doe-eyed than she wanted him. “I don't know how to answer your first question. It's not like taking a vessel. It's … closer. Some senses dim. Others sharpen. There are … instincts. I want to stop traveling and ambush seals. I want to head out onto the farthest ice floes instead of moving toward the warlock.”  
  
“Maybe he's making that happen. We know he's moved shop before. He might sense you coming. You sense him well enough. Don't you, Carebear?”  
  
Castiel didn't seem too worried about the warlock or Meg's newest nickname, judging from the way he ignored her completely. “I'm human at night, at least for now. The winters here—”  
  
“What do you mean _for now_?”  
  
“You've noticed as much as I have. I'm not changing all the way back.”  
  
She scratched her fingers through his hair, where some of the strands had gone hollow and transparent. “I wouldn't worry. Girls love a silver fox.”  
  
He didn't protest that he wasn't silver or a fox, but a former angel stuck in an amalgam of human and polar bear. That meant he thought this was _important_. Which, shit.“This area spends approximately thirty days per year in complete darkness. I should remain fully human for that time period, provided that we haven't lifted the curse before then.”  
  
Meg stared at him.  
  
Castiel swallowed. “I don't think the warlock's curse will allow me that. I'll stop returning to human form by late fall.”  
  
Meg didn't know what to say, so she let his silence stand.  
  
#  
  
Meg heard fumbling, rustled tent fabric. She popped her eyes open and watched Castiel strip off his clothes, boots, socks. His shoulders broadened as he worked. Fat plumped over his muscles. His spine grew longer. Then it sloped.  
  
He stumbled his way from the tent. Meg had never heard a polar bear scream before Clarence. Now it happened every sunrise, like clockwork, like a fucking rooster. She hated it more each time, when sounds of pain were supposed to fall like music on her ears.  
  
Causes were all well and good—they were everything—but some were more worthy than others. She'd started out working for Azazel. She'd graduated to Lucifer, her Big Daddy, the one who was supposed to take them all on up when he stormed Heaven.  
  
Now she was here, playing nursemaid for the second time. Championing an ex-angel. Keeping a human warm and fed, whenever he wasn't a bear.  
  
She heard Castiel sneeze snow. Her chest tightened. She zipped up the tent flap, then moved into the warm spot he'd left. Polar bears slept as much as humans, and she knew he needed a couple more hours rest. She was nice these days. She'd let him have it.  
  
Strained, rumbling breaths. Clacking claws.  
  
Meg was gonna put that warlock through so much pain, the rack would feel like an afterthought.  
  
#  
  
She packed up the tent and their gear, then went to find her angel-turned-human-turned-polar bear. She spotted his black nose about fifty feet from the campsite. He'd stretched out against a ridge he'd dug for himself, his aquiline head resting on a fat plate of a paw. She stood over him, hands on her hips. “I'm a demon.”  
  
Blue eyes blinked, then sharpened, like Castiel were annoyed at Meg for pointing out the obvious.  
  
“It was bad enough when I stuck by your side as an angel. At least this way you have claws.”  
  
He stared through her, like he could still see her true face. Then his expression changed. If a bear could look mischievous...  
  
Meg found herself faceplanted in polar bear, thanks to the giant paw that had swiped across the back of her knees. It moved up her spine until her shoulders were pinned against Castiel's chest. Was he hugging her? Who'd taught him that one?  
  
A warm, dry nose nudged itself behind her ear. A chuff threatened to bust her eardrums …  
  
Just like that, Meg was free to scramble to her feet. “Anyone ever tell you you're a huge sap?”  
  
Castiel looked all too pleased with himself as he rolled to his paws and shook snow off his back. He butted his head against her hands.  
  
“Only for you, Clarence. Only because I know just how good it's gonna be when you make all this up to me.” Meg only rubbed his ears for a second. “Now which way to the warlock I'm gonna kill?”  
  
Castiel's look suggested she'd be waiting in line. He tilted his head a moment, then turned North. He seemed calm. Intense. Every inch an angel bear.  
  
He looked over his shoulder, as frosty as the ice floes. Then his eyes softened with dumb affection, and he moved out over the thick white ice, slower than usual, like he couldn't bear for Meg to fall more than a step or two behind.  
  
###  
  
FIN.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a gift written for a prompt at insmallpackages, which read: _SPN ficlet, Meg/Castiel, for the prompt "winter is coming"_.
> 
> Somehow, in thinking about all of the things one could do with the idea of an approaching winter (ice zombies! fleeing toward the equator with a wintery apocalypse on your heels!), I landed on "Castiel is a cuddly, cuddly polar bear." I despair of myself sometimes. I really do.


End file.
